Unaccompanied Minor (16 page)

Malcolm and I both stifled a shudder. I was covering the spot with another airline blanket when suddenly the intercom squawked to life.

“Flo!” Alby’s voice blared. “We found a bomb threat on board! Start stowing the carts. We’re landing immediately.”

“What kind of bomb threat?” Flo asked.

“It’s a note. I found it on seat 42B.”

“What does it say?”

“It’s written in red Sharpie marker. It says, ‘There is a bomb on board this plane! Not kidding!’”

“Seat 42B. Got it.” Flo turned away from the intercom, crossed her arms, and glared at me sternly. “Care to let me in on this, April?”

“I needed to create a diversion!” I cried. I knew flight attendant protocol dictated that all bomb threats be treated seriously, no matter how trivial they may seem. Standard practice was to alert the other flight attendants and the pilots, and prepare the aircraft for an immediate landing.

“Malcolm, remember that incident in 2009?” I pleaded. “When a passenger found a note in the seat pocket in front of her, and all she had to do was hand it to the flight attendant and they landed the plane right then and there?”

“Totally!” Marcus chimed in. He had begun pulling the crew bags from their shelves and opening them in search of anything useful and/or suspicious.

“Never mind that it was a giant Boeing 747 and the nearest airport was a regional strip that was hardly long enough to land a dragonfly,” he continued. “They plunked the plane straight down, overshooting the runway by a hundred yards and deploying the emergency slides and everything. The note was written on a barf bag by a previous passenger. No one knows how previous. It could have been years.”

“I know,” I joined in. “I loved the simplicity of it. Just one sentence, ‘There’s a bomb on board,’ and
boom!
, mayhem….”

“Mayhem, exactly. Mayhem is a great diversionary tactic.”

“… except later it was determined to be a bad joke.”

“What’re you kids, the Psychotic Bobbsey Twins?” Flo grumbled as the carts began their descent in the elevators. “And I think your pet crocodile peed in the sink,” she told Malcolm. I helped her as she deftly pulled the carts off their ballasts and rolled them into slots under the rows of convection ovens. I was impressed. Flo weighed ninety-five pounds and I knew for a fact that a full L-1011 beverage cart weighed more than three hundred pounds.

“It’s all in the leverage,” Flo grunted as though reading my thoughts again. It occurred to me that this was the first time I’d actually seen her work. Wow, she could be a rocket if she put her mind to it.

Malcolm continued to rummage through the crew bags, calling out the items he came across to let us ascertain their potential usefulness:

Curling Iron? Yes.

Hairbrush? No.

Shaving cream? Yes.

Extension cords?
Yes!

Bible? No.

Swiss Army knife?
Hell yes!

Four-inch heels? Maybe… okay, no.

Hairspray? Yes.

Masking tape? Yes.

Prescription medication?

“What kind?”

“Sectrol….”

“That’s a beta-blocker,” Flo said.

“Xanax….”

“That’s for anti-anxiety.”

“Cafergot….”

“That’s to treat migraines.”

Malcolm stopped digging through the medicine and looked at Flo. “How do you know all this?” he asked.

“That’s my bag you have there,” she said. I asked her if any of the drugs were deadly. “Not really,” she answered, “but I wouldn’t recommend taking them all at once. That Cafergot, especially. It can make your brain set off car alarms from across the street.”

I directed Malcolm to put the drugs in the “yes” pile of useful things, but not before Flo grabbed a supply from each canister and stuffed them in her apron pocket.

Malcolm went on to the next bag.

“Zip ties,” continued Malcolm.

“Wait, whose bag is that?” I asked.

“It doesn’t say, there isn’t a crew tag on it.”

“What else is in it?”

Before Malcolm could answer me, the intercom blared once again.

“False alarm, Flo,” Alby’s voice carried into the galley. Maybe it was the grinding of the jet engines, but she sounded nervous. “We’re not landing after all.”

Flo and I looked at each other with misgiving. “Ah, this is not according to protocol,” Flo said into the speaker.

“I know. Can you please send up some pepper to put on their eggs.”

“Say again?”

“Pepper, for their eggs.”

What?
I thought. This was an afternoon flight; there weren’t any egg dishes on board. There was hardly anything at all on board now that the airlines have cut back their first-class meal service to what was practically a sack lunch. Malcolm looked perplexed as well, but he was looking down into the bag before him rather than at the source of the message.

“What’s all this about eggs and pepper?” I asked Flo.

“It means…” She tried to act calm as she tapped out another menthol from her diminishing pack, but was betrayed once again by her shaking fingers. “It means,” she began again, “that we’re being hijacked.”

I clapped my hands over my mouth.
Crap!
I should have known. The cabin and cockpit crews always establish a unique code phrase during briefing for exactly this type of situation.

Eggs and pepper.
Duh.

Hopefully the pilots had been paying attention. They should be privy to all interphone communication between the cabin crew during the flight—like an ongoing party line. For whatever reason, Alby had called us, not the pilots, but surely she was counting on them hearing her.

But again, I have major trust issues, and a large reason is because of pilots. I am not
at all
confident they perform as competently as they should. Ash alone is a walking cautionary tale. He once had to take a month’s disciplinary leave because he forgot to lower the landing gear on approach. It wasn’t until he got close enough to the landing strip that the tower caught a visual and told him about it. He had to abort the landing and redirect to another airport because he didn’t have enough fuel to stay the holding pattern.

And take the story (totally true) about those pilots who fell asleep at the wheel, overshot San Francisco, and were halfway across the Pacific before the flight attendant finally pounded on the cockpit door. And what about that incident in 2010 when two WorldAir pilots mistakenly landed a jet with one hundred and eighty passengers on the taxiway of Minneapolis airport—not the runway, but the
taxiway
. Evidently they’d spent the flight surfing the Internet in the cockpit, and somehow that caused them to forget the difference between an empty runway and a taxiway that is anything but empty—usually. Luckily, no one died. Oh my
God,
don’t even get me started about the pilot mistakes that result in mass casualties.

Flo placed her hand on my arm because I was starting to hyperventilate again. I looked at Malcolm for support, but he was still peering into the crew bag, his face full of puzzlement. I recognized the candy-colored TSA lock on it that Malcolm had easily picked.
That’s Ash’s bag
, I realized. I focused on my breathing once more. I’m surprised at how well this works to calm you down.

“Malcolm,” I asked when I settled a bit. “What are you looking at?”

He lifted his head to meet my eyes, a look of sheer bewilderment on his face.

“A bomb,” he said.

Agent Kowalski:

So you’re saying….

April Manning:

The bomb wasn’t mine.

Investigator DeAngelo:

But the note….

April Manning:

Ironically, the note was. I mean, super ironically. Because of the top ten things I expected to encounter today, I’d say an actual bomb would be in the bottom four. The top six, of course, would include overworked gate agents and a crowded Concourse B at the airport, where the flight to Los Angeles departed from gate number thirty-four, which, wouldn’t you know, is the furthest possible gate from the escalator. It is like number four on my list of fifty worst airport gates of all time. It’s a good thing I don’t have any luggage.

Thanks for the blanket, Inspector DeAngelo, it’s getting chilly in here.

Agent Kowalski:

Listen, Nancy Drew, I’m finding it hard to believe anything you say. We’ve got your friend Malcolm in the other room, and he’s telling us a different story. He’s dropping the dime on you as we speak.

April Manning:

Agent Kowalski, you and I see things a lot differently. For example, I know you’re lying to me about Malcolm.

Investigator DeAngelo:

Kowalski, I told you that wouldn’t work.

Agent Kowalski:

Listen to me!
We’ve got three dead bodies….

April Manning:

Four.

Agent Kowalski:

. . .
four
dead bodies….

April Manning:

At least.

Agent Kowalski:

. . . at
least
, and one of them is my informant. I need to get to the bottom of this.

Inspector DeAngelo:

Then let her finish, Kowalski! April, what about the bomb?

April Manning:

Right, the bomb. The bomb appeared to be a basic circuit-board model attached to a plastic explosive inside a boom box. Ironic, huh?
Boom
box? It looked like it could have been the kind that was reportedly used to bomb Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988. All two hundred seventy people on that plane were killed, you know. Plus a bunch on the ground.

Inspector DeAngelo:

I’m very aware of that. What else did it look like?

April Manning:

The boom box was an old Toshiba model with the big speakers on either side. Malcolm thought it looked weird for three reasons. One, the front panel was removed, exposing a dense block of what looked like off-white Play-Doh at the center between the two speakers. Two, there was a choke collar attached to it by a chain about four inches in length. And three,
who brings boom boxes anywhere anymore
?

Inspector DeAngelo:

True.

April Manning:

Malcolm held the bag with both hands, too frightened to put it down. Flo immediately snuffed out a perfectly good cigarette, which, if you knew Flo, totally confirmed the gravity of the situation.

“What do I do?” Malcolm asked.

“Um, okay, uh,” I jabbered, “according to the ‘Bomb Recognition’ section in the flight attendant manual, the first on the list of things to look for in a suspicious device is, um, an explosive.”

“That would be the big chunk of C-4 in the center there, right?” Flo pointed.

“Right. Okay, now where is the power source?”

“Could it be those two big Eveready batteries?” Malcolm squeaked.

“Yes, it definitely could. Very good, Malcolm.” I tried to sound upbeat, and Malcolm actually did crack a weak smile.

“What about an initiator?” Flo asked, eager to interject her training as well. “There’s supposed to be an initiator, right? Do you see an initiator?”

“Yeah, actually I do,” I responded, pointing at it.

“Oh, hell,” she sighed.

“I don’t see a sensor, though,” I informed them.

Malcolm’s grip on the bag handles had whitened his knuckles. “What? What does that mean? No sensor?”

“It means what you’ve got there is a bomb with no on-switch,” Flo said. I was impressed. You would have thought she didn’t pay attention when I drilled her on this in preparation for her recurrent training each year. “You can put it down,
carefully
.”

Malcolm gently placed the bag on the floor, then reached to pick up Beefheart out of the sink and move him away. As the dog passed over the bag, though, a digital panel on the boom box sprung to life and began to beep.

“What the hell?” Flo gasped.

“
Crap!
” I squeaked.

Malcolm clutched Beefheart to his chest and looked stricken. Then he pointed to my pocket. “Why is your pocket glowing, April?” he asked.

Out of nervousness I had been clutching in my pocket the strange device I’d taken from the imposter Brighton McPherson. I pulled it out and saw that the digital window was lit up and scrolling some numbers and letters. The information appeared jumbled but for two unmistakable words. I had to blink my eyes to make sure I was reading them right. To this day I can’t believe what they spelled.

Agent Kowalski:

What did they spell?

April Manning:

“Captain Beefheart.”

Agent Kowalski/Investigator DeAngelo/Detective Jolette Henry:

What?

April Manning:

I know!

Agent Kowalski:

Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, kiddo! If I find out you’re spinning stories and wasting our time I’ll throw you in a damp slammer filled with rats, I don’t care how too-young you are! This is a serious situation! There are four dead bodies—